Guest: Jamil Nizam is the CEO of Waldom Electronics and Chris Lauret is the COO. Jamil is also an entrepreneur coaching client at CEO Coaching International.
Episode in a Tweet: A first-class onboarding process will make a BIG first impression on your new team member.
Quick Background: Most companies have it backward. They celebrate when someone leaves the company instead of when they join.
On today's show, Jamil Nizam explains how his first-class onboarding process eased new COO Chris Lauret into his responsibilities while also giving him a new perspective on just what kind of company he was working for. Chris and Jamil also discuss how they coordinate and execute key tasks remotely so that BIG keeps happening, even at a distance.
When he started out in the restaurant business, Chris Gannon's goal was to open one great restaurant at a time. His mix of incredible flavors, first-class hospitality, and high nutritional value was such a success that in only four years Bolay expanded to 15 locations.
And then Covid-19 hit. With indoor dining suddenly off the menu, Chris and his team had to make a major pivot that would allow them to sustain the business through the pandemic while also laying the groundwork for a successful future.
On today's show, Chris Gannon explains how transparent leadership, all-hands-on-deck teamwork, and a commitment to community building have kept Bolay on track to make BIG happen.
Guest: Fiona Kesby, the CEO of Go-VA, which is a company that provides outsourcing services to firms around the world. She’s also an entrepreneur coaching client at CEO Coaching International.
Episode in a Tweet: Strong culture and a commitment to BIG values can keep your business growing through the pandemic.
Quick Background: CEOs have discovered that the culture they created before Covid-19 is playing a BIG role in how well their companies are moving through the pandemic environment. Rearranging the nuts and bolts of what you do is a heck of a lot easier if you have a clear vision of why you’re doing it, as well as strong values supporting every person and process.
On today’s show, Fiona Kesby discusses how her principles have guided her virtual assistant firm through not just a Covid-19 disruption, but a full military lockdown by the Philippine government that’s one of the longest quarantines in the whole world.
Guest: Kurt Wilkin, the Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist of HireBetter, a company that "harnesses the power of talent to solve business challenges." Kurt is also an active member and officer of YPO.
Episode in a Tweet: Covid-19 disruption has created a richer than usual talent pool. Take advantage and upgrade your team where you need it the most.
Quick Background: At the beginning of the year, CEOs were exploring every available option to find top talent during a very tight labor market. The workplace disruption that Covid-19 caused has changed that. If you need to fill an important leadership position in your company right now, the pool of available talent is deeper than it's been in quite some time. But don’t think that means making a key hire is going to be easier. On the contrary, CEOs have to be even more careful that they’re not letting sterling resumes and shiny smiles distract them from what’s most important: hiring someone who is going to buy into your vision, enhance your culture, and help your company make BIG happen.
On today’s show, Kurt Wilkin discusses effective strategies for sourcing talent and the key considerations CEOs need to make when weighing short-term needs versus long-term goals.
Guest: CEO Coaching International’s Stephen Bebis. Stephen held a variety of senior merchandising roles at Home Depot before being named the VP General Merchandise Manager for the Mid-South Division. He also founded Aikenhead's Improvement Warehouse and built it to $1 billion in sales before selling it to Home Depot. After the acquisition, Stephen served as President and CEO of Home Depot Canada and chairman of the Aikenhead/Home Depot Partnership Board. Stephen also founded Golf Town, built it to 65 stores, and took the company public.
Episode in a Tweet: There's always a crisis somewhere. The best leaders have a continuous planning process and the right people to execute it.
Quick Background: When Stephen Bebis joined Home Depot in 1984 the company had just 14 stores. When he left in 1990, he was running a $20 billion division as a head merchant and was the VP of the southern part of the country. And while some might look back on the ’80s and early ‘90s as a booming time for business, think about everything that happened during the 6 years that Stephen helped Home Depot grow. Two presidential elections. Black Monday, 1987. Tumult in the Middle East, including Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan. Not to mention annual hurricane seasons and other unpredictable disasters.
No, running a business isn’t easy during Covid-19. But as Stephen discusses on today’s show, CEOs always have to be prepared to adjust to unforeseen circumstances and refocus their efforts on how to satisfy and grow their customer base.
We all want our customers to be happy. But what happens when they’re not?
No matter how delighted your customers are when your products and services deliver as advertised, at some point, a shipment will get buried in a blizzard, software will crash, a green employee will say the wrong thing at the worst time … or a global pandemic will disrupt your supply chain.
According to customer service expert Matt Dixon, how your company addresses those bumps in the road is far more critical to generating customer loyalty than all those perfect, positive experiences the customer might be taking for granted.
On today’s episode, Matt discusses some insights from his book “The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty" that will help you refocus your customer service on what really creates lasting repeat business: quick problem solving and ease of use.
If you really want to grow your business fast, you need to build a team that will disagree with you.
Does that sound counter-intuitive?
Well, it worked for Abraham Lincoln. Our greatest president famously assembled a “team of rivals” in his cabinet because he wanted to work with smart people who would challenge – and improve – his thinking.
So what does your “cabinet” look like? Is your C-suite full of Yes Men and Yes Women? Have you created an atmosphere where your best people are afraid to challenge you with their best ideas?
Either situation can be fatal to a company’s growth, especially in today’s uncertain and rapidly fluctuating economy. Right now, every business leader is being challenged to think outside the box and find innovative solutions to today’s unprecedented problems. In this podcast, Gerry Perkel describes how building a team that disagrees with you can help a CEO not only tackle the challenges that COVID-19 presents, but successfully grow their business to new heights.
If you want your company to stay successful, then maintaining a meaningful growth rate needs to be one of your BIG annual goals. But as we’ve seen recently at companies like WeWork and Uber, chasing growth for the sake of growth just pumps your business full of hot air. Once the hype bubble bursts you could find yourself overvalued, understaffed, and bleeding cash.
On today’s show, CEO Coaching International’s Tracy Tolbert lays out a more practical managed growth strategy that will get your company BIG without sacrificing profitability.
Vision. Cash. People. Relationships. Learning. Only the CEO can tackle those key responsibilities. If those five things aren’t the focus of your day, then you’re wasting your time and hurting your company.
Like cutting the ad budget when you have to reduce costs, CEOs often push learning to the back burner in favor of higher-profile things like casting a vision or visiting top clients. And while vision and meeting clients are critical, so too is taking the time to learn and stay on top of the latest changes sweeping the business world. Setting aside that time might feel indulgent when we know there are projects to monitor, books to balance, and teams to manage.
On today’s show, CEO Coaching International’s David Sun explains why self-improvement isn't selfish – it’s essential to mastering your space, inspiring your team, and growing your business BIG.
A successful business is a marathon, not a sprint. And just like long-distance runners and Ironman competitors, good CEOs have to prepare for “hitting the wall”: that inevitable point in your company’s progress where you’re just not progressing anymore. Growth stagnates. Gears grind. The next BIG goal is one step in front of you, but you can’t find the energy to move your feet.
In her career as an entrepreneur and executive, Ramona Capello earned a reputation for breathing life back into dying businesses. On today’s show, she explains why companies of all sizes hit the wall and how the best CEOs break through and start growing again.
Many ambitious companies learn too late that there’s a BIG difference between the size of your total market and the size of your addressable market. But focusing on your addressable market without limiting your growth potential can be tricky, especially if you don’t have a clear vision forward and a mastery of the key numbers driving your business.
On today’s show, former Samsung NeuroLogica CEO Phil Sullivan discusses a three-step process he used at Samsung that will keep your company’s growth and the size of your addressable market in sync.
One of the biggest challenges companies face is how to hire great people at a reasonable price in one of the tightest labor markets on record. There's simply not enough qualified talent to fill everybody's needs, especially if your company is early in its growth journey and trying to catch the giants in your field.
Smart companies are thinking more broadly and more globally about how to solve this pain point. But lingering misconceptions about offshoring can discourage CEOs from investigating what could be a talent gold mine.
On today's episode, Chris Van Vladricken answers all your questions about offshoring including: service options, the hiring process, costs, and how the nuts-and-bolts infrastructure works to keep your local employees and remote workers in sync.
The battle for the best talent is as fierce right now as it’s ever been. The best performing companies spare no expense when it comes to recruiting top performers. And young companies just starting down the road to BIG need to make sure they’re not stuck settling for second-best.
How?
One: make sure your employee compensation package is stellar.
Two: make sure you’re not so busy shopping in the same crowded talent pool that you’re overlooking other ways to hire the best performers for the jobs you need done.
Mastering number two is a BIG reason Jim Bennett grew Unishippers from 0 to $120 million. In this conversation, recorded live at the 6th Annual CEO Coaching International Summit held in Santa Monica, CA, Jim and coach Don Schiavone discuss how Jim recruited unconventional employees and then trained them up into a major differentiator between his company and the competition.
One of the reasons that I started the annual CEO Coaching International Summit is that I wanted our clients and friends to have a forum where they could learn about what’s next. Our speakers have talked about new products, emerging markets, outside-the-box problem solving, and some really mind-blowing tech.
Thanks to Cyrus Sigari, we can add flying cars to our list. And if you think that sounds far-fetched, think again. According to Cyrus, heavy hitters like Google, Uber, Boeing, and Airbus are all battling to be first to market with small, affordable aircraft that are as easy to drive as a car. This space is going to explode sooner rather than later, and the implications for all businesses could be huge.
But I’m so proud that our Summit is also a place where CEOs can learn from leaders like Cyrus, whose personal story is maybe more amazing than the work he’s doing. His family fled the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and as he grew up in the States, Cyrus fell in love with aviation. He learned to fly while he was a teenager and started his company right out of college.
Then, a series of personal challenges led Cyrus on a spiritual journey that’s helped him redefine everything he does in business and in life.
In this presentation, recorded live at the 6th Annual CEO Coaching International Summit held in Santa Monica, CA, Cyrus Sigari talks about how he arrived at his Most Transformative Purposes, and how all CEOs have to step outside of their businesses if they truly want to make BIG happen.
Some CEOs were surprised when Business Roundtable redefined the purpose of a corporation to include promoting “An Economy That Serves All Americans.”
But some of the most successful companies that we work with at CEO Coaching International are the ones that have a vision beyond profit. They’re the companies that are actively asking employees what’s important to them. They’re turning down huge cash infusions from celebrity investors because they believe their products can improve the environment. They’re finding innovative new ways to let employees earn ownership and grow their personal wealth. And they’re being intentional about how they build their legacies.
On today’s show, we welcome back Kerry Siggins to discuss the grassroots efforts she’s undertaken to promote a global safety movement in her industry. Starting a movement definitely isn’t for every CEO. But it’s leaders like Kerry who are leading their employees and their businesses towards BIG things beyond the business.
The BIGGEST and best businesses are about more than just business. They’re an expression of the CEO’s professional and personal values that can impact the world for generations. Building that kind of enduring legacy takes clear vision and intentional planning. That’s why Mark Moses and the CEO Coaching International team have developed a series of exercises that CEOs can use to clarify goals and create missions that transcend profit.
On today’s episode, Mark Moses walks us thorough those six exercises and explains how his own responses have shaped his approach to legacy planning. Mark also shares FREE tools that CEOs and entrepreneurs can download right now that will help you think about how you are living your life and what you may want to do differently to create a lasting legacy.
A good CEO is always looking for ways to inspire his team and encourage employees to take ownership of their work.
One way to do that? Let your employees earn some real ownership.
Top young talents want to feel like they’re a real part of the companies they work for. More and more CEOs are setting up Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) to provide that incentive, that motivation, and that feeling of being a part of something BIGGER than profit.
On today’s show, Adam and Jason Svet discuss the business and culture fit issues that CEOs who are interested in an ESOP should consider. They also talk about the nuts and bolts process of setting up an ESOP and how going through the process helped them to put their company’s values in action and get their employees thinking and working BIG.
Most companies get customer service all wrong. They make a big show of designing shiny apps, building amazing showrooms, and rolling out cutting edge products. But they forget to put a laser focus on who actually pays for all that—the customer! When you deepen your customer relationships and focus on creating a memorable experience, you can charge a premium price and retain clients for life.
“Technology is only 10% of the experience,” says customer service expert John DiJulius, while your person who delivers the service is the other 90%. “Technology can never build a rapport, show empathy, or make a brilliant comeback when we drop the ball, but you can,” he said.
Many businesses are trying to de-emphasize the importance of the employee and replace them with chat bots and AI. But that technology will never outperform a well-trained human who steps in when your customer needs personalized help.
In this presentation, recorded live at the 2019 CEO Coaching International Summit, John DiJulius explains how you can train your team to own every problem, make meaningful connections with every customer, and create a world-class customer experience that will drive BIG business.
If Emma Cohen and her collapsible, reusable straws sound familiar, you probably caught her appearance on the TV show “Shark Tank.” After a successful Kickstarter campaign, Emma stood face-to-face with sharks Mark Cuban and Mr. Wonderful himself, Kevin O’Leary, to try to secure an investment. And not only did Emma field multiple offers from the sharks … she actually turned them down!
On today’s episode, recorded live at the 6th Annual CEO Coaching International Summit held in Santa Monica, CA, Emma Cohen and her coach, Chris Larkins, discuss where she got the courage to make such a difficult call and stand her ground against the sharks. Fans of “Shark Tank” are going to enjoy Emma’s behind-the-scenes peek at how the show really works. But the lessons Emma learned are going to help all entrepreneurs who are fine-tuning their pitches and deciding how much an injection of much-needed cash is really worth.
Ron Carson’s family lost everything in the 1980s farm crisis. Instead of preparing to follow in his father’s footsteps, Ron had to watch his father cry for the first time and move into a trailer.
Then, when he was studying at the University of Nebraska, Ron read a magazine article about becoming a Certified Financial Planner®.
Thirty years later, Carson Wealth is one of the BIGGEST names in finance. And I’m proud to say that my good friend Ron Carson is a person who runs his business and his life with a passion we should all try to emulate.
In this special episode, recorded live at the 2019 CEO Coaching Summit, Ron Carson discusses how his family’s hardships motivated him to push past fear, figure out his “Why,” and dedicate himself to things he loves doing.
Hiring the best people is always critical. Right now, it’s also very challenging. According to the staffing pros at Integrity Staffing Solutions, unemployment is near the lowest figure in decades. That translates to around 7 million open jobs, and only 6 million people looking. Add in the retiring baby boomer generation and the rise of the millennial workforce and it’s absolutely imperative that your firm is doing everything it can to make open positions as attractive as possible.
On today’s show, Todd Bavol and Megan Couch of Integrity Staffing Solutions give some important tips on how to make your company a preferred destination for top talent.
About ten years ago, Josh McCarter was running a struggling SaaS business in New York. His company was generating about $700,000 in annual revenue, but burning through $350,000 a month. He didn’t have enough cash on hand to cover next month’s payroll. His customer base had flatlined. And just when it seemed like relief was on the way, a terrorist attack disrupted a critical investment. Not even his YPO forum mates thought Josh was going to make it.
I should know – I was in that forum!
Fast forward to 2019, and Josh is in charge of a company that was recently purchased for $2 billion.
In this conversation, recorded live at the 2019 CEO Coaching Summit, Josh and I talked about how he kept cool during all this adversity and focused on a plan that pivoted his company to BIG. Josh also describes how turning around his original company and zeroing in on one key strategy prepared him to run a billion-dollar business.
Cole Zucker turned a sudden job loss into a BIG opportunity. He booked an eight-week stay at a hostel in China that turned into a three-year fact-finding and networking mission. Eventually, Cole spotted a market that he thought was ready to explode in the US: LED lighting. Green Creative was born, and five years later, Cole was riding a rocket ship from $0 to $40 million in growth that landed him a significant exit.
On today’s show, Cole Zucker discusses those early years of explosive growth in terms of what he learned and what he would do differently. He also shares a couple of great insights on what he did to overcome a major challenge that he hit in the company's early days.
In 2017, Sarah Dusek came to CEO Coaching International looking for some guidance on how to get her glamorous camping (“glamping”) company to the next level. Two years later, thanks to some courageous decisions and a commitment to our processes, Under Canvas has grown BIGGER than Sarah dreamed, and recently secured a major private equity investment that will help expand its operations across US National Parks.
In this special episode, recorded live at the 2019 CEO Coaching Summit, Sarah Dusek talks with her coach, Sheldon Harris, about her incredible journey, the importance of resilience, and how staying true to her company’s values helped her guide Under Canvas around some potential potholes and stay on course for BIG.
Blockbuster. Xerox. MySpace. And, yes, Kodak. These businesses are long gone, but they endure as cautionary tales to any CEO who’s complacent. But dealing with disruption isn’t just about planning ahead: it’s about cultivating a culture and a mindset within your team that prioritizes innovation, experimentation, and above all, BIG thinking.
On today’s show, Jaime Szulc shares the steps you can take to position your company so it's on the giving end of disruption, not the receiving end. Jaime also discusses some warning signs he spotted during the end of his tenure at Kodak that all CEOs should be on the lookout for if they want to avoid a similar fate.